


Twelve Thorned Roses

by Rhymefire



Series: Soldiers and Engineers [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: BUT ALSO HAPPY, Brother and Sister - Freeform, Tragedy, a million flowers, all the feels, engineer with anger issues, jane has a mouth on her, rated m for potty mouth and major character death, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-15
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-03-05 00:10:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13375983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhymefire/pseuds/Rhymefire
Summary: Commander John Shepard and his sister Jane have a ritual between them. The gift of a dozen thorned roses. Why? Because sometimes the most beautiful things are the ones that hurt you.





	Twelve Thorned Roses

Jane fled through the ship’s lower deck. She bumped into an engineer, and ducked away before he could scold her. She snuck into an out of the way corner and crumpled to the floor. Piping obscured her from view and she took a perverse pleasure in seeing that her haphazard dash through the ship had ripped her dress. She dashed away tears at the thought of all those wasted hours staring anxiously at her reflection in the mirror. Today had been the first time she’d worn a dress. Now all she wanted was to shred it and sprinkle the pieces into the drive core.

“Jane?” She reflexively turned towards the sound of her brother’s voice. He peered at her through a mess of piping. She sniffled. John’s brow furrowed and he carefully picked his way towards her. He was bigger than her, and had to go around some of the denser knit groups of pipes that she had been able to scramble through.

The seventeen year old youth settled beside her and she shuffled closer to him. “Dirk’s a bastard.”

A film of biotic energy flickered over John’s hand, but he closed his fist over it. “He broke up with you.” It was not a question.

She nodded and rested her head on her brother’s shoulder. “I really liked him too. He didn’t even say why.”

She raised a hand to wipe her nose and John grasped her hand. “You punched him?”

“Only a little….”

“Your knuckle’s split.”

“Oh.”

Her brother was silent for a moment. Then he smiled ruefully and said, “You know, I’m supposed to beat him up or something cause he hurt you.”

She laughed and immediately slapped her hand to her mouth to stifle it. The thought of her brother doing something like that was ridiculous. “You’re sweet.”

He shook his head. “Nah, that guy was a jerk. He was an idiot to leave you. I mean…” he fingered her dress and made a face. “Well, you tried hard.”

She punched him in the shoulder. “Suck a krogan dick, asshole. I know, the dress is stupid, isn’t it?”

“It looks nice, you just don’t look very happy in it. You deserve a nice guy. Someone who won’t laugh when he sees you in overalls and grease stains.”

Jane groaned and leaned her head against his shoulder. “I’m never going to be pretty enough to get flowers, am I?”

He snorted. “What?”

“Flowers. I’ve always wanted flowers.”

He ruffled her hair. “Probably not. I’ll get you flowers to make up for it, okay?”

She huffed and shoved him off the piping. “Asshole. You’re supposed to say, ‘Of course you’re pretty enough to get flowers. A dozen roses with no thorns.’”

He stood up and brushed specks of invisible dirt off himself. He offered her a hand. “Roses without thorns? All pretty things have thorns.”

She grasped his hand and pulled herself up. “No, they don’t.”

“You have thorns.”

Jane smiled and socked him in the stomach. He caught her fist in a net of biotics and held it fast. She laughed and snarled in mock fury. The two tussled in the maze of pipes. Their shouts and grunts echoed through the guts of the ship until an engineer roared at them to quiet down and they fled, giggling breathlessly, to their room.

* * *

 

Jane threw the vase with all her might. It deflected against her brother’s biotic shield and shattered against the wall. “You’re a spineless coward!”

John took a deep breath and regarded her with a steely gaze. “I’m enlisting in the army and that makes me a coward?”

“You’re just doing this because our family’s always done it. So you don’t have to think about your fucking future. What the hell is wrong with you? Why would you do this?”

“I’m going to help people. We fight-“

“So others don’t have to. God. You sound like dad. Or mom. You want to kill people?”

He sat on his bed and watched her pace in their room like a caged animal. “Are you done?”

She kicked at a shard of glass - thank god she was wearing heavy boots - and snarled wordlessly. “Get out of my room.”

“You realize that we’ve shared a room since we were kids?”

“You just want mom and dad to be proud of you.”

“I want to help people.”

She shrieked and tugged at her hair. “Then become a cock sucking social worker you fucking fucker. Fuck!”

“You’re lucky mom doesn’t wash your mouth out with soap.”

She threw herself beside him and stuck out her tongue. She tried not to remember those moments when they’d hidden themselves in the guts of whatever ship or station they were living in at that moment, cross their pinkies and swear that they’d never follow their parent’s path. She tried to push away memories of waiting anxiously at their parent’s side when they lay unconscious or drugged out of their minds in sickbays. “I can’t watch you do this,” she said. Her voice broke and she hated herself for it.

John sat stiffly beside her. Her took her pinky with his own. “I’ll come back alive. Every time. Pinky swear.”

She’d never wanted to slap her brother before.

Jane refused food that night and went to sulk in the bowels of the ship. Before she could really throw herself into her sulking, a blot of red distracted her. The offending blot was in her favourite spot, a crevice in the pipes where she could see the drive core. It was a bundle of thorned roses tied together with a ribbon. She was not surprised to see them there.

* * *

 

“You should take the job,” Jane grumbled. “Who cares if it’s for the military? Ugh. See if I take John’s advice again.”

“Are you okay?” A turian yelled up at her.

Jane jumped slightly and immediately regretted it. The sling supporting her swayed worryingly and she fought the instinct to cling to it. Idiot turian. Yes, now was the perfect time to startle her. When she was hanging from a metal girder trying to help install a drive core. An insanely large drive core. It was twice as big as any she’d seen before and it posed a serious structural issue. It was certainly a challenge. She just hoped it wouldn’t fall to pieces once the ship started up.

She was not the only engineer hanging precariously from a girder. This was, after all, a joint effort between humans and turians. She didn't know who had the idea of a giant stealth ship and she didn’t know whether she wanted to slap them or kiss them. The challenge was worth working with a team. Teamwork was an alien concept to Jane and was something she usually avoided.

Her alarm beeped and she sighed thankfully. “My shift’s over,” she shouted. “Bring me down.”

Once she was safely on the ground, a turian came up to her. “Your bonded is here to see you.”

“Your translator glitched. Or mine did. Something glitched.”

“A man with flowers. Over there.” He pointed at a familiar form in bulky armour holding a bouquet of roses.

She laughed and slapped the turian on the shoulder – something he apparently did not like as he twitched away from her – and ran over to her brother. She snatched the flowers out of his fingers. “Does this mean you survived your latest mission?”

He smiled at her and said, “Are you hungry?”

She laughed and looped her arm through his. “Starving.”

* * *

 

“Let someone else do it!” Jane thumped her fist against the desk and her omnitool’s screen wavered momentarily.

John stared at her onscreen. “There is no one else.”

“That’s stupid.”

“We fight so others don’t have to.”

She wiped at her eyes. “You sound like mom and dad.” She wasn’t sure if that was a joke or not. Certainly a laugh bubbled up inside her, albeit a hysterical one that threatened to rip out of her throat and leave her screaming. “You’re an idiot. And if you die on Ilos, I’m not getting you flowers.”

He leveled an impassive gaze on her. “I’m the one who gets you flowers, anyways,” he said. A soldier ran through the background and his attention shifted away from her. The screen went blank.

She sat as though she’d been hit over the head with a cudgel. He’d hung up on her. She tapped the reconnect button. Nothing. She hit it again. She hammered it frantically. Jane ripped the omnitool off her wrist and flung it at the wall. It spilled over the floor in a cascade of pieces, but she couldn’t have cared less. Jane had a sudden mad desire to send her brother roses and reached for her omnitool before she remembered it lay broken into pieces. She curled up on her bed and clutched a pillow tightly against herself.

* * *

 

Jane waved her bouquet of roses around like a streamer. She had already whacked some people upside the head in her enthusiasm and the roses shed petals like a molting bird. She skipped into her parent’s home and pounced on her brother. His bulky N7 armour hit her like a steel wall, but she clung to him tighter when a biotic field reflexively sprang into life around him.

John realized who she was as soon as she shoved the roses into his face with a delighted screech. He playfully smacked her with his own bouquet – gotten just for her – and his biotic field expanded around them until it was just the two of them in a bubble of her brother’s biotic energy.

“We beat the reapers!” She screamed.

He swept her into a crushing hug and spun her around. Her parents whooped and cheered out of the corner of her eye. Her mother popped open a champagne bottle and the fizz spilled over her hand and crashed onto the floor. John’s armour bit into her skin, but Jane could only cling to him and laugh.

The biotic bubble burst around them. He lifted her by the waist and shook her as though she were a rag doll. She screeched with laughter. Delighted tears blurred her vision and the roses shed their petals in a whirl of vibrant colour.

* * *

 

Jane hummed slightly as she picked her way through the market. She closed her eyes and breathed in the smells of fruit and spices. She couldn’t identify half of them, but she was going to try them all.

A television screen mounted onto a wall caught her eye. She stopped and stared at it. The groceries she’d already selected slid out of her fingers. Jane wasn’t worried. The news was wrong all the time. She’d helped build the Normandy. She knew every part of it like the back of her hand. The Reapers could not simply sneak up on such a ship and crack it open. Not when it was manned by her brother.

She drifted away from the screen, hardly seeing where she was going or what was around her. She may have bumped into people, but she could not have known if she did and years after the fact she couldn’t remember.

A smear of colour caught her eye. Jane changed directions and found herself standing in front of a florist’s shop. Selections of flowers were bundled together, but she could only see the vibrant red in front of her. A woman said, “A dozen roses, please.”

Once the vendor began stripping the thorns off the stems, she realized that it had been her. Her throat froze and she stood helplessly as the vendor cut the thorns away. She watched them fall to the ground and flinched when he held the roses out to her.

She did not go home. She went to a ship and she bought a ticket. She didn’t know where the ship was going, but it didn’t matter. Engineers traveled all the time. All sorts of people did. She held the roses loosely in her fingers and traveled into the guts of the ship, where the pipes crossed and intersected to create a maze. She bit into the rose stems and held the flowers in her teeth so she could climb.

Engineers had to do a surprising amount of climbing in their work. Jane perched on a pipe and looked down at the drive core. It burned blue underneath her, like a biotic field. One by one, she plucked the rose petals and let them slip out of her fingers. They fell into the drive core in slow, lazy motions. One by one, they burned away. The engine was a marvel. It burned so efficiently that there was no smoke, for the simple reason that it was burned too.

Once the petals were gone, Jane felt the stems slip out of her hands and they too fell into the flickering, azure field beneath her.

Throughout the ship’s journey, Jane would return to the drive core when the engineers were asleep and no one would bother her. She sat on a pipe over it and peered down into its depths as though deciphering the future, or perhaps the past. She longed to pluck an answer out of the azure haze beneath her but there was nothing. Not even smoke.


End file.
